1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a presence and absence prediction method and a presence and absence prediction apparatus for predicting the presence or absence of a human in a predetermined place.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has conventionally been known a technology for predicting the presence or absence of a person on the basis of data representing an amount of power consumption in a predetermined place (e.g., a home, a workplace, or the like) and notifies a result of the prediction to a terminal of a home-delivery company who are going to visit the home.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2012-181789 discloses a technology (hereinafter referred to as “conventional technology”) for recording a past amount of power usage per unit time in a predetermined home, for, upon receiving an inquiry from a home-delivery company, calculating the probability of presence so that the probability of presence is higher as a past amount of power usage corresponding to an estimated time of delivery is closer to the maximum value, and for notifying the probability of presence to a terminal of the home-delivery company.
The probability of presence calculated by the conventional technology takes on a large value in a case where the past amount of power usage is large and takes on a small value in a case where the past amount of power usage is small. However, in general, there is a case where a person is absent even when the amount of power usage is large or a case where the person is present even when the amount of power usage is small. The conventional technology does not anticipate such cases and is therefore undesirably low in prediction accuracy.